Blogs at Worldwatch

Each blog features regular contributions from Worldwatch researchers and outside experts on the global issues that the Institute tracks, from climate change negotiations to how to feed a growing population. We invite you to engage our bloggers in dialogue on the latest news and developments in their respective research areas.

What questions are being overlooked or underappreciated when we talk about the world of tomorrow? This is the second of three exclusive sneak peeks into our newest State of the World publication, scheduled for official release April 13, 2015. Join us for the launch symposium in Washington, DC or livestream online. Could poor harvests and political tensions disrupt...

What questions are being overlooked or underappreciated when we talk about the world of tomorrow? This is the first of three exclusive sneak peeks into our newest State of the World publication, scheduled for official release April 13, 2015. Join us for the launch symposium in Washington, DC or livestream online. Could expensive energy spell the end of...

Following the conclusion of the United Nations climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, last December, a busy schedule of breakout sessions has begun for Latin American business and political leaders in early 2015. Building on the Lima Call for Climate Action, these summits have the important objective of creating functional and market-based mechanisms to achieve “...

Colleen Cordes’ State of the World 2014 chapter, “The Rise of Triple-Bottom-Line Businesses,” explores the role of ethical capitalism in the quest for sustainable economies. Entrepreneurs are beginning to challenge business as usual, infusing ethics into the notoriously ruthless corporate world. In State of the World 2014, contributing...

Climate change has been a constant reality for many Filipinos, with impacts ranging from extreme weather events to periodic droughts and food scarcity. The most affected populations are coastal residents and rural communities that lack proper disaster preparedness.Tacloban City after Typhoon Haiyan. Credit: The Guardian
According to the Center for Global Development, the...

One of the biggest challenges with using renewable energy for electricity generation—specifically wind and solar power—is intermittency. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Affordable, reliable, and deployable storage is seen as the holy grail of renewable energy integration, and recent advances in storage technology are getting closer to finding it.
The current electricity grid has virtually no storage—pumped hydropower is the most...

While many participants had hoped for a rocking performance by negotiators, they left still straining to hear the sounds of success.
The most recent round of the United Nations climate change negotiations began early the morning of November 11. After a marathon final session that lasted more than 24 hours, talks concluded at nearly 9 p.m. on Saturday the 23rd. This dramatic finish has become an almost yearly...

I arrived in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, five weeks ago. In the days prior, I had read up on this southwestern African country and its tourist sites, learned about the wildlife conservation successes it has achieved since independence in 1990, and was even reminded that this was where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie chose to give birth to their first child. But on my first night here, I was confronted with a different side of Namibia that isn’t making as many headlines...

Over the past twenty years, climate negotiations have been dominated by concerns that addressing global warming is anti-business and onerous to future development. The insufficient progress we have made at the last 18 COPs towards ‘preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system,’ the ultimate goal of the UN Climate Convention, is a consequence of this – and the summit currently underway in Warsaw is not exactly on course to make a change. Working in many...

The global agricultural population—defined as individuals dependent on agriculture, hunting, fishing, and forestry for their livelihood—accounted for over 37 percent of the world’s total population in 2011, the most recent year for which data are available. This is a decrease of 12 percent from 1980, when the world’s agricultural and nonagricultural populations were roughly the same size. Although the agricultural population shrunk as a share of total population between...

By Andrew Alesbury
Inadequate management of human waste is a dire problem in much of the developing world. Swelling urban populations can make matters worse by exposing increasingly dense populations to illnesses carried by human waste. Some, however, are making good use of the surplus sewage. Rather than allow the urine and fecal matter to lie fallow, some have...

By Brandon Pierce
Animal health services for livestock owners in several parts of sub-Saharan Africa are limited because of poor infrastructure and high delivery costs. To address this deficiency, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has supported the training and use of Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs) in these regions. CAHWs are community members who have been trained in basic animal...

By Sophie Wenzlau
“We have lost one of the world’s passionate defenders of the right to food,” said UN Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva, upon learning of the death of Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa....

The ancient culinary craft of fermentation is bubbling up once again. Revived in workshops and community kitchens, fermentation has become one of the many “reskilling” projects taking place in grassroots cultures from Europe to the United States in response to economic and environmental drivers.First chop the veg: Sandor Ellix Katz gives a workshop...

Insert token cute puppy picture here (photo by merz_ingbert via Pixabay)
Babies and puppies. Everybody seems to love them—perhaps it’s instinctual, perhaps it’s socialization. Probably the latter, for in Washington, DC, where I live, far more people stop to make goo-goo noises at puppies than at babies. And in some cultures, dogs are meat sources, not sources of...

This story was written by Nancy Averett and produced by FUTUREPERFECT.
Ben Kneppers paused as he strolled around a music festival in Santiago, Chile. In front of him was a booth where local kids could repair damaged skateboards, making them ride-able again rather than throwing them away. Kneppers, an environmental...

Jacob Peter Gowy’s “The Flight of Icarus.”
What if Icarus’ father—knowing his son would fly too close to the sun—had made the wings he designed more resilient? What if he had used bone and string and not just wax to bind them? Would this ancient myth have turned out any differently? Probably not. Icarus would...